Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday November 11, 2013 @06:08AM
from the with-a-little-help-from-my-friends dept.

theodp writes "The U.S. tech giants' pledge to up their privacy game in the wake of reports that all-your-data-belong-to-the-NSA rings a little hollow to Abraham Newman, who reminds us that such protections run counter to the business model and public policy agenda that tech companies have pursued for decades. 'For years,' writes Newman, 'U.S. information technology (IT) firms have actively backed weak privacy rules that let them collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers' lives and gave them a competitive edge internationally. Those same policies, however, have come back to haunt IT firms. Lax rules created fertile ground for NSA snooping. In the wake of the surveillance scandals, as consumer confidence plummets, technology companies' economic futures are threatened.'"

How all of us were "ok" with the companies collecting this information. When an intelligence agency combines this info, we suddenly scream for privacy. I'm scared enough that google accesses my Gmail content, and Apple my iMessages and contacts.

When the telephone was invented, it was obvious to all and sundry that it was prone to eavesdropping. It's the case with all forms of communication. Privacy is never a given, it is something that has to be actively sought and maintained, like any other human "right".
What is insulting is that companies are going out of their way to betray the customer. I am not thinking so much of software giants but Intel which forces you to relinquish your privacy with apparently no way to get around their backdoors.

I am not thinking so much of software giants but Intel which forces you to relinquish your privacy with apparently no way to get around their backdoors.

Stop worrying about intel. AMD is including a TPM in their CPUs too, it has other purposes as well so it has another name but it's the same shit when you distill it. And all the ARM processors are also working on including them. Anyone who doesn't will find themself in a poor position when they're the only ones not permitted to play DRM video.

Seems to me, that unless stated otherwise, I should be able to have a private conversation with someone (email, phone, etc) without having to worry about the conversation being recorded and accessed by someone for means which it was not intended.

If employers and health care providers are already "googling" people for information about rates and employability, imaging the same private companies accessing an NSA scoring system to gather the same insight. It's not just about people's personal lives, it's about

It's morality, a quaint concept these days. Just because it's _possible_ to listen in, for instance, doesn't mean it's right to do so. That little bit seems to get lost in most of these 'discussions'.

For that matter, all those pointing out how ordinary emails are sent plain-text, so what? Consider the header to be the envelope, just like of a letter via snail mail; works for me. Somebody has to physically do something to read an email by opening the file, just as someone has to open the envelope

All of us were NOT "OK" with companies collecting this information. If you were, I'm sorry for you. In order to be OK with that you'd have to believe that corporations don't have disproportionate power over peoples' lives, that they won't sell you out in a heartbeat because it's profitable or because they don't want to be bothered, and most importantly, that information once collected won't be abused. Information will ALWAYS be abused and there are only two cures for that: don't collect it in the first

All of us were NOT "OK" with companies collecting this information. If you were, I'm sorry for you. In order to be OK with that you'd have to believe that corporations don't have disproportionate power over peoples' lives, that they won't sell you out in a heartbeat because it's profitable or because they don't want to be bothered, and most importantly, that information once collected won't be abused. Information will ALWAYS be abused and there are only two cures for that: don't collect it in the first place, or jail the abusers of it. That latter is kind of satisfying, but rather hard to pull off unfortunately. It is far better to not allow the collection in the first place, and that means reeling in corporate power in addition to government power.

You say the threat level isn't the same. I would submit to you that the only reason we don't have private corporate armies running around the US (we used to) is that they have simply outsourced that task to the government. So when you speak of government or corporations in this country, you're just talking about the same large entity which has to be stopped.

Well, The Market is supposed to protect us against this kind of stuff. If we don't like having our private information passed around like Pokemon cards, we take our business to a company that doesn't do that.

Wait? They ALL do it? We don't have a choice? It must be meddling Socialist Government forcing them to be that way!

Actually - you DO have some choice. Did you fill out that frequent shopper's survey? Chump. Did you supply your telephone number the last time you purchased a pizza over the counter? Chumped again. Do you give out your cell phone and email address everytime a vendor requests it? Chumped, chumped, and chumped, over and over again. Do you use that credit card for ALL your purchases? You are so chumped!

Use dollar bills, in person, and refuse to supply information of any kind to the vendor. THEY DON'T NEED ANY INFORMATION TO MAKE A SALE!!

But, if you insist on getting that penny discount on your next bag of Cheeto's, go ahead and play their game.

AC makes a more intelligent comment than you do. He encourages me to poison the data base. I like that.

You still make excuses for cooperating with the invasion of your own privacy. My "rant" was entirely in context. Don't cooperate with the assholes. They need no information for your day-to-day business. As for your supposedly more important stuff - don't buy on credit, and you don't HAVE to supply any information. I have a debit card in my pocket, and I have cash money. I use the card sparingly. W

"Utilities are paid with old fashioned checks, drawn on an old fashioned checking account. Larger purchases are often paid for in CASH, with no paper trail left behind."

Like your name, number, license number, etc. isn't already on the check and most places won't process it without knowing it. As for large cash transactions, businesses are required to report large cash or credit transactions. The door about the freedom of cash you talk about was closed long ago. All cash is serialized so track

"As for dealing with local banks, that only works as long as the locals have a good opinion of you."

And, you find that to be unbelievable, or something? Yes, the locals have a pretty good opinion of me. Strange, isn't it? They KNOW that I'm good for whatever, they don't have to check a computer database.

1. There are cheap, cash-only grocery stores near me - but they're only open while I'm at work. So I have to shop at one of the places that offers "free" membership cards with a 30% discount. I'm lucky enough that I could refuse the membership card without completely breaking the household budget, and I could just live with the $50 or more extra I would spend per month on groceries without it. But most families can't afford the difference.

My grocery store actually had some bug in their software in which about 100 customers all had the same name. The cashier would routinely refer to me by some name I had never heard during the checkout process. That suited me fine, but eventually they noticed the error and issued new cards for all of us.

Yep, why ask for info: if that store has a CCTV (to see you and your parked car on their lot), stores their money in a safe or bank (can count serial #'s on bills). And keeps receipts (id-ing what you bought)...

The world of opt-in/opt-out is coming to close folks and becoming a more tactical situation. Even if you opt-out, I'll eventually have the ability to single you out and then make up a profile of you using public info...the systems are that good nowadays.

This fascistic "only following orders" mindset really needs to be nipped in the bud. America understood that it was unjustifiable in the 1940s, but it's their first refuge now.

If for profit(*) you maintain a product knowingly used for evil, you are just as responsible as the person directing you.

(*) A person who has little choice will have diminished or zero responsibility. So, a destitute person who gets a job as a cleaner for Google when there is nothing else on offer, or someone given forced labour in a

This fascistic "only following orders" mindset really needs to be nipped in the bud. America understood that it was unjustifiable in the 1940s, but it's their first refuge now.

America learned that it was unjustifiable only in the very, very most extreme cases in the 1940s.

If your commander orders you to put a bunch of people into a room and fill it with cyanide gas and you do it... you might be held accountable for that years later, maybe. (i.e. only if your side loses the war, and you're one the folk they can track down and extradite.)

But if your orders don't involve killing innocent, unarmed, non-threatening people in cold blood -- America expects you to do what you're told.

I had thought that the most powerful outcome of the Nuremberg trials was its impact on the public view of necessary ingredients for freedom. IOW, you can never have freedom unless each person acts as a rational individual, questioning everything.

Even if the law hadn't changed, the Western value system had been refined - the civil rights movement of the '60s, for example, was the product of post-war enlightenment. Even the hippy movement was an albeit sometimes directionless expression of, "Question everythi

Even besides that. It doesn't matter if you're ok or not. Even if you don't share your information, if one of your friends has your information on a phone and shares this with facebook it will still be shared...

Regardless of whether you've ever consented to share it with facebook or anything else.

I really want to help all of the people on slashdot to get it once and for all.Private is what happens in your own home. And once you let in many other people say for a party... Well that is pretty public as well.What happens on the internet, at a bar, at a party, or anywhere else is in public.That cell phone conversation you had while waiting in line at the store? Public.That party where you got drunk and naked? Public.Email? As private as a postcard.What do you people don't get about this. If you want som

Email is trivial for anyone to monitor. It is sent in freaking clear text and has been since day one. It is like handing a folded piece of paper to a courier at best.The idea that something that you post to a bunch of your "friends" on a social networking site is private is pure insanity. You need to get a grip on simple reality public is public.

For instance, my mail server communicates with many other mail servers using SSL, including when talking to other servers. Yahoo, Google, and Outlook.com all use TLS and upgrade to a secure connection on HELO. Likewise my mail servers REQUIRE SSL AND AUTHENTICATION for picking up mail or sending from our addresses. Include SPF in the mix and the only clear text version of the mail is sitting on my server hard drives and the client machines.

I'm fairly confident the NSA hasn't gotten into my system yet, and they didn't fake our certificate chain since its an internally generated chain that no cert provider is in, just our own not network connected CA.

"Email can be secured with current technology and protocols. Easily.""Include SPF in the mix and the only clear text version of the mail is sitting on my server hard drives and the client machines."So only when it is on your server. And even then it is not secure for your other users since you can read it. Most sys admins are too ethical to do such a thing but I have run into at least one that read everyone's email. Again I say no more secure than a postcard. Anyone in the postal service can read it.

No in your home you have what is called an expectation of privacy. You do not have that expectation of privacy at a party, on the street, while driving, on an airplane, at a bar, club, or party. Email may have an expectation of privacy but it is a foolish one to expect since it is almost always stored in clear text on someone's servers. It is foolish to depend on it with anything important since it takes only a sysadmin to break that trust and Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all scan your mail for ads and to g

Google does not have the ability to put us on the no-fly list. "Ok" or not, the threat level just isn't the same.

But they could affect your credit score which, given the ever expanding uses (like employment, housing, even dating) can have an even larger effect on the average person's life than being on the no-fly list.

I hope a bitch (which is what she'd be) will check my credit score before dating, and save me some fucking trouble.

The issue of credit checks by employers is an ugly one, though.

The issue of housing is also an ugly one; it's illegal to be homeless, but you can still be denied housing. Compare to car insurance, where SOMEONE has to insure you (used to be GEICO, dunno who it is now.)

No, but it does have the ability to control what you see on the Internet. In fact, it is doing so already, and claiming it is for your own good! Which is more important to you -- to get on an airplane or to get online?

Neither are required for life in even the slightest way. Plenty of fully functional people have jobs, homes and families and they never fly and don't have Internet access.

Just as a reminder, since it seems to be forgotten so often.

Airplanes are barely a 100 years old.

The Internet, or more specifically, the web, is only about 20.

These are not 'requirements' for life. You will survive without either.

Technically no freedoms are 'requirements' for life, you can survive without them. 150 years ago people of a certain skin colour didn't have any freedoms in the US yet they were alive. Even now, in many countries, plenty of people have jobs, homes and families without ever having the chance to freely express their political views.

The standard for freedoms isn't what's a 'requirement' for life, and it'd be a very unfortunate world if it was.

Most wanted to believe the articulate sock puppets:
Legally you had the US Constitution to keep the US gov away.
Legally you had teams of in house (corporate) lawyers defending the 'brand' from hints of warrantless gov collaboration.
Your political leaders that would 'out' any goverment domestic spying just for party political points.
The US stock market would never allow the US gov to risk its international sales and would side against warrantless gov and keep sales up.
You had the public, gov hardware and software 'interface' that would be uncovered very quickly with great press coverage by so many skilled staff.
You had staff, academies and skilled members of the press who would find some trace.... and then win media prizes with the story of the decade...
Skilled academics, code reviews, gov standards, software brands and teams of individuals had all looked over net encryption and found it usable for consumers.
After Snowden it was all found to be a hoax.
Political leaders did nothing, lawyers said nothing, academics educated the junk code to generations of fee paying students, the tame press never followed any stories, corporations took gov cash and helped, telcos ensured the optical was in place. Mercenaries and contractors enjoyed the overtime.
The brands are now a joke.

"How all of us were "ok" with the companies collecting this information."

Speak for yourself, Kemosabe. There were a lot of us who have been bitching about the invasion of privacy all along. Were we listened to? Of course not - we were shouted down. "There is no privacy on the internet, everything you put out there is available for public consumption. Grow up dummy, if you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide!"

Always, the conversation was derailed with just such words.

Fact is, conversations on the internet are about as private as discussing your private life on the town square. Of course it's not "private", but you don't expect snoops to be actively engaged in eavesdropping activities. On the town square, you can look around to see if the town gossip is lurking behind the nearby bench. Or, whether the Chief of Police is loitering within earshot.

The internet? Only some of the more savvy users are aware just HOW LITTLE privacy they have. We are forced to avoid monitoring and eavesdropping. And, it's impossible to tell just how effective our efforts are. And, we know all the while that if NSA or any other agency takes an active interest in us, they can just tap into everything at the ISP level.

Those of YOU who were "ok" with data mining - it's about time you woke up, and understood that we have valid concerns. Now - what ya gonna do about it? Can we get NSA and a few dozen of the programs that they support defunded? Can we get some of the various police tools shitcanned? What are we gonna DO? Resort to the darknets? That really isn't a solution. All that the NSA has to do, is to install a few thousands of their own onion routers and I2P routers, and whatever else comes along. Perfect MIM attack vectors, since they straddle the backbones anyway.

What ya gonna do? Just sit around and bitch, with those of us who have been bitching for years? Do you have a plan?

You might join us, in writing your congress critters. Repeatedly. Often. Write to your own, and everyone else's as well. Sign all the online petitions that you can find. Start your own petitions. And, bug hell out of your congress critters. They HATE to get hate mail. They much prefer not to hear from you at all, and they love fan mail, so send the HATE MAIL.

Pandora's Box has been opened, no matter what Congress does we have no reason to believe the NSA's surveillance or corporate spying on citizens will ever get better.

I think the real solution to this is ignore the political side completely, and work on technological solutions. Make the next version of SMTP work like the Tor network. Make something like Diaspora or Status.net (open source social networks) so easy to setup and run that it's a few taps on an iPhone, Android phone, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Actually - congress has the sole authority to fund government programs for a reason. It is their final check on things. They can, and have, simply defunded things that they ultimately disapproved of. Remember Acorn? If I were to dig, I could find more, I'm certain. The appropriations bills are part of the checks and balances system. It's not so different from your own personal life. "I want this and that and two of these!" But, when the cost is tallied up, you decide that you just can't afford all o

you were ok with it since they only had to pay off two dudes of two parties for it.

as to competitive edge? actually there is no actual proof of it giving a competitive edge whatsoever. if it did, american companies wouldn't have been so fucked so many times. it does give an added cost of business though, as you need to spend time pestering the people for their postal codes etc shit and as you spend time sending mail to addresses they haven't been living at for years.

How all of us were "ok" with the companies collecting this information. When an intelligence agency combines this info, we suddenly scream for privacy. I'm scared enough that google accesses my Gmail content, and Apple my iMessages and contacts.

i was fine with google taking my info because i know they a singular goal: use the information to provide more targeted ads. they don't care what you are interested in, just get an ad to you. Microsoft and Apple have a bad track record of psychopathic behavior [wikipedia.org] and denying any responsibility for their actions. the NSA has psychopathic behavior and a god complex which is extremely dangerous.

you may think this is extreme but it's no exaggeration when i say the NSA has no problems with killing anyone that po

i was fine with google taking my info because i know they a singular goal: use the information to provide more targeted ads. they don't care what you are interested in, just get an ad to you. Microsoft and Apple have a bad track record of psychopathic behavior [wikipedia.org] and denying any responsibility for their actions.

Please give us some examples of what you call "psychopathic behaviour".

i was fine with google taking my info because i know they a singular goal: use the information to provide more targeted ads. they don't care what you are interested in, just get an ad to you. Microsoft and Apple have a bad track record of psychopathic behavior [wikipedia.org] and denying any responsibility for their actions.

Please give us some examples of what you call "psychopathic behaviour".

well off the top of my head, microsoft has a string of bold face lies, anticompetitive behavior (strong arming OEMs and demanding "protection" money for Android come to mind) and then there is greatest lie of them all, Bing. even when it was unquestionably clear that they were copying results from google, they claimed they didn't and referred to their method of copying as "another vector" of data collection. as for Apple, they invented a deportation raid to get back their iphone 5 prototype. there is als

Take your business elsewhere whenever possible. Only thing that will make companies sit up and pay attention is when their bottom line starts to be affected. Computer professionals advise non-techy business types on how best to protect sensitive company information against the massive industrial espionage spy network [startpage.com]. People may not care about their facebook page and personal email is being compromised, but they sure as hell care when their companies sensitive business information is put at risk...

Yes new firms in distant lands will offer amazing new deals on servers, local support and boasting of no links in the UK or USA.
Hardware will be rebuild and air gapped. Many will still use and enjoy the 'free' US brands but trust is gone.

The free market only works if it is free. When the government decides to change the ground rules, there is no choice. There is no vote with your feet. Nobody will be allowed to provide phone/internet/email that doesn't include spying, and using crypto won't change that one bit. They will just ban crypto and vpn.

yeah, last time I checked the NSA's reach was worldwide. And US courts have upheld the 3rd party doctrine where any information a 3rd party has about you (phone records for instance), is not subject to the same Constitutional protection as your personal effects are.

Well, it costs money to run all the servers and machines that deliver cat videos and the latest pictures posted by your secret crush. Who's going to pay the bills for those servers ? Someone somewhere has to pay. Either you pay upfront with cold hard cash, in which case you can make indignant noses about unlawful uses of your data. If you don't want to pay cash, and instead have a "free" service, your data is what the developers will try to monetize. And there ain't a goddamn thing you can do about it.

I have many times the server power that is necessary for serving all the data I want to be available online. My internet connection is sufficiently fast for hosting most of it -- all of it if I can use distributed hosting. The cost of hosting is negligible. If there were no Youtube or GMail, the cost of doing it yourself would not crush anybody. Those services feed on laziness, not necessity.

Riiighht. The Internet will be balkanised because the US is only govt doing this & there is no cooperation between the intelligence agencies. Hey, it's not like the Communications that the French govt was complaining about was collected by the DGSE & then passed onto the NSA as the price for the USA deploying drone assets to Mali, or that the Germans perform "legal" surveillance of their population secretly or that the Brazilians spy on diplomats or...

Either you pay upfront with cold hard cash, in which case you can make indignant noses about unlawful uses of your data. If you don't want to pay cash, and instead have a "free" service, your data is what the developers will try to monetize.

I would love it if I could pay for an effective search engine that didn't track my search habits in order to alter the results.

I would love it if I could pay for a social network to keep in touch with my friends and business contacts and it didn't spy on me and spam me

I would love it if I could pay for a social network to keep in touch with my friends and business contacts and it didn't spy on me and spam me and sell my information to all and sundry.

It's called your own website. Put up a site based on any CMS, say Drupal, and then have all your friends create accounts there. But if you're paying someone else to run a site, then by definition you're paying someone else to compile data on you. Then the government gives them a choice between turning over the data or going to PMITA prison.

Google and Facebook make their money through advertising. I expect them to track users for that reason. That doesn't concern me - when I don't want them to know what I'm doing, I use a different browser in which I never login to either service and I have third party cookies disabled.

But what about your cell phone company, your internet service provider, your bank, your physical retailer with an account system (warehouse retailers with memberships like Costco, grocery stores with outrageous prices if you

Where I live, I have a simple choice between a 768Kb DSL or COMCAST. What kind of choice is that. And I guess that means that my internet traffic is broadcast around my neighborhood before it hits the POP on the fat coax.

My choice is Comcast, unless I want to pay for satellite internet or use a 3G (4G is not available from any cell phone carrier in my area) cell phone plan. I'm sure Comcast has a list of every website I've visited since I moved into the house and sells it to advertisers.

I've kicked around the idea of getting a VPN service like ProXPN or something. Then they can track my every move and sell it to advertisers, but I'd rather see some tiny company (ideally, one based in another country) have this informat

Wait a minute, don't blame this shit on me. I've been telling everyone that social networking was dangerous and evil since "Instant Messaging" was invented in the 90's. None of them ever fucking listen to a damned thing I say though and neither did you. You have only yourselves to blame.

Surely the competitive edge is the hidden market for private data the NSA created!

So business models can undercut rivals by selling your private data to the NSA in secret, and it's really a government subsidy controlled by the military, but is never revealed because it's hidden behind terrorist scaremongering.

Has far more data that is likely to hurt you than the NSA does, and they have no problem selling to anyone with enough money. Potential employers having access to my salary history without my consent scares me and will hurt me far more than the government knowing I called my aunt yesterday. Likewise with my insurance company knowing that I visited Dunkin Donuts yesterday. Put away your tinfoil hats and see the real threat.

Corporate America in general can't directly intercept and store your emails, chat logs and VOIP sessions. They have little data fiefdoms dominating partial areas on your online life related to their respective businesses, wheras the NSA has built massive data warehouses to record and store all your bases...

What tinfoil hats? Are you suggesting that it is crazy to be afraid that the government might abuse the massive amount of power we've given it, even though every government has abused its power without fail? The people who work for the government are humans, not perfect angels; thus, it makes no sense to me to not be wary of them.

Of course, I don't think corporations having all this data is a good thing either, but there are no tinfoil hats present here.

Well, okay... but my post didn't really strongly suggest that there were significant differences to begin with. I'm aware that any information these corporations have will likely also fall into the hands of government thugs.

If passed, then all corporate data becomes government data, and government can and will choose to share that data with yet other corporations. In short, you will no longer be able to distinguish between corporate and government surveillance - it will all be intertwined.

Yes centralising and the setting of global "US" standards. You wanted to book a room, sell, buy, trade, fly, call, fax, email - a US entity was in someway setting global interconnects and multinational support. Your safe encryption was their joke.
Everything could be sold on for marketing, value adding, research, fine print.... all safe back to the 'allowed' buyers.

More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public m

You're a moron. That quote, that quote's from 1975. People have been warning about overreaching government for a long time (long before 1975). I was just giving an example of that. You seem to imply that you think I'm crazy. It doesn't take a crazy person to recognize that "Western" governments have been getting more authoritarian and totalitarian as technology progresses. Soon enough we'll be at the stage of voluntary always on telescreens (c.f. Microsoft's Xbox and camera). The police state loves that sor

It's just the typical cycle. Rewind to the 80s, hippies passing out flyers on streetcorners warning of the trilateral commission's influence on American finance and people throwing them away saying "this looks like a bunch of bullshit". Forward to 2000, the trilateral commission's influence on finance and politics is a proven fact, and now we're looking at more groups like the Bilderbergers etc and people are saying "this looks like a bunch of bullshit" all over again.

We should string the tech company executives up alongside the politicians and bureaucrats. And when the revolution comes, apologists will also be up against the wall.

Loss leader and branding was the story told. That until the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth was 'usable' at the consumer end. It was better to build the brand at the server end - to be ready in 1-5-10 years and their newer interactive PC's.

I've posted it elsewhere, but I'll repeat it - I don't care about Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Microsoft (through Bing and Hotmail) tracking for the purposes of ad revenue. That's their complete business model. I get what I paid for.

Oh, come on.
Plenty of these companies already worked together with China behind the great firewall or other countries that required a tight all encompassing security/censoring framework.
It's just the quirks of doing business in a country, your home country included.

...perhaps I could correct this a little:"'U.S. citizens have passively accepted weak privacy rules that let companies collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers' lives..."

I keep hearing about the "US govt" this and "companies" that.The fact is that the whole 'privacy' thing is comparable to the cigarette issue for the last 50 years....NOBODY believed cigarettes were in any way good for you, and by the late 1960s pretty much everyone recognized that they were quite harmful (regardless of what the cigarette companies insisted).

In short, the consumers willfully participated and knew (when they bothered to think about it) that companies were collecting massive amounts of data with every transaction, using (without complaint) their social security number as an id#, etc.

When I've got a friend or three complaining about companies/government gathering private data, they're usually paying for their meal with a credit card.

I mean , the browsers allow all the tracking etc.. Once the people doing the browsers are done selling us , maybe we'll have a break.Browsers have to be made not to allow the snooping. They are not made that way , they are made to support snooping.They are made to help advertisers take all they want from our machines.

Time to fork and abandon browsers that do not make the efforts to protect us l

The Mozilla Foundation, which makes Firefox, gets most of its funding through hundred million dollar grants from Google. Google gets most of its money from advertising.

That's why Firefox browser (and of course, the Chrome browser) will never take any serious steps to block user tracking. If Mozilla ever got serious about user privacy, the next grant from Google would never arrive and Firefox development and bug fixes would slow to a trickle.

This is also about attacking [schneier.com]; hacking, intrusion, modifying systems, sabotaging hardware [wikipedia.org], etc. Is not a passive "i want to know this", but an active/aggresive "i will plant a backdoor/rootkit to be able to do there whatever i want", including hitting you as a person, as a country, or as a trusted media that reach enough/certain people/companies.

We already knwo they planted backdoors on Tor users [slashdot.org] and Slashdot and LinkedIn users [slashdot.org], and with Silicon Valley cooperation, probably they will be bundled in a lot more software/hardware/services. Time to stop playing boiling frog.

My browser is pretty much an "out of the box" IE10 install with minimal plugins. I don't use an ad blockers, I grew up reading newspapers and magazines, my eyes automatically ignore all but the most intrusive ads. However I was intrigued by your claim so I clicked "Disable ads" and (for me) the ads obediently disappeared.

So the problem is very likely something to do with your environment. If you want them to have a look at it then post the details of the problem and your environment to "feedback" - email

It's useless encryption, though. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the NSA can ask Google to decrypt and hand over any information on any person for no stated reason. Google can't even challenge the order in court. Google's decision to use encryption internally was a publicity stunt that only convinced people who didn't take five minutes to think about the value of that encryption (i.e. none).

I disagree that Google is the biggest sinner. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Bing and Hotmail track us because that's their entire business model. Targeted advertising is what they do, that's all. That's evil, but it's open evil.